Selectmen get first look at 'friendly' Gutierrez plan
Published on May 5th, 2004
STONEHAM, MA - Town officials eyed their first glimpse of a mixed housing and office park use at the former site of the Boston Regional Medical Center (BRMC) last Thursday night while meeting with Gutierrez Company and Simpson Housing, LP representatives.
As members of several boards expressed concerns with the potential impact of the proposed 600 housing units on town services, an array of safety, traffic and planning consultants made assurances that the development would be of little financial detriment to the town.
In fact, according to John Connery of Melrose's Connery Associates, the project would realize an annual $1 million return upon completion and several short-term gains, such as an estimated $550,000 in building permit and hook-up fees.
"It's a long-term fiscal benefit. The nature of the project is going to maintain the fiscal return. It's not going to return the $2 million [estimated under the previous proposal]," said John W. Connery of Melrose's Connery Associates.
Perhaps the primary argument advanced by Connery, the planning and development consultant detailed studies indicating that geographic location, building design and a limitation on what would be considered family-sized apartment units will cap the number of children expected to live at the housing development - directly minimizing potential costs to the school system.
Specifically, Connery claimed that elevated buildings and developments isolated from a community's central population areas typically house less school-aged children.
"You can get quite a bit of range in a two-bedroom or even in a one bedroom unit. But once you get in an elevated building, the number of children drops dramatically. That's a cultural thing," Connery explained.
"Another interesting thing we found in our study, done in August of 2003, is when you have a project that's isolated [from the rest of the town], that also brings down numbers," he added.
However, despite the projections that only 58 school-aged children would occupy the chapter 40B dwellings, Stoneham Police and Safety officer Larry Rotondi worried about the costs to his department in light of both calls to the site and the expected increase in traffic along the Fells Reservation Parkway.
"The biggest concern to the police department is how we're going to service this area because it's really a town within a town. It's going to take eight to 10 minutes to get to the site and with cutbacks, we're only going to have two men on the street," Rotondi remarked.
According to Simpson Housing spokesperson Spencer Welton, the developers would consider a wide-variety of options for restricting service impacts to the police, including having on-site security available to respond to minor incidents such as a barking dog.
While the town doesn't currently pay for its ambulance service, Town Counsel Bill Solomon suggested that the developer agree to pay for its share of ambulance calls if such a charge was incurred by the town. Scoffing at the idea and the inference that the development would draw many emergency calls because it will market the units to empty-nesters, Stoneham attorney Charles Houghton dismissed the request.
"Are you serious Bill?" asked Houghton incredulously. "It's not an old-age home. The ambulance service provided to this site would be the same for the rest of the town."
Solomon also raised several additional concerns with the proposal, primarily whether it was prudent for the town to allow its last major commercially developable land parcel to become the site of a residential apartment complex. After asking Houghton whether the housing-use stemmed from a perception that the office use wouldn't be allowed or wasn't marketable, Solomon claimed that town officials should carefully consider the long-term impacts of the development.
"The developer has never proposed a less intensive commercial development to MEPA. If a less intensive commercial development is possible, is it marketable?" said Solomon.
"That's really a developer issue [whether it's marketable]. The town's issue is that if it can't be marketed, the question then becomes, what does that cost the town over the short-term compared to the long-term cost of having housing placed on the last developable commercial land," the town attorney added.
While Town Planner Michael Gallerani agreed that the housing was financially less beneficial to the town in terms of tax revenues, he opined that the project would address two serious town concerns: 1) Stoneham's affordability and the resulting impacts to local businesses and 2) the town's aging population and the need to draw younger long-term residents to the town.
Still concerned with the projects size and traffic impacts stemming from the proposed 1,010,000 square foot development, several Stoneham and Melrose and Medford residents contended that the proposal was still too large given the surrounding Fells Reservation.
"The litmus test for what is the appropriate scale is the impact on the historic improvements that service the site," opined Stoneham resident Miriam Regan-Fiore. "The project is still too big because it's going to require the road to be changed significantly for traffic."
Yet according to traffic consultant Scott Weiss of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc, while the project would generate nearly 9800 daily vehicle trips, nearly a nine percent increase in traffic over the previous proposal, peak hour traffic going to and from the site would be reduced by 10 percent during both rush-hours.
When a Medford resident blasted the consultant for doing nothing to alleviate traffic that backs up on Elm Street when an accident on I-93 occurs, Weiss contended that no development in any surrounding community could solve such a large problem.
"I don't disagree that traffic is heavy on Elm Street...But any other project in Stoneham or Medford is not going to solve the traffic on I-93. We've identified some improvements and they're not going to happen without an entity to step forward and propose those improvements," responded Weiss.
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